Within elderly care facilities there is a limited number of staff and growing demands to monitor and provide proactive services to patients. Traditionally, patients wear signal buttons which allow them to call for emergency assistance. However, while these can assist in gaining the care a patient needs in an emergency, they may be intrusive and require patient compliance in wearing them.
Furthermore, these types of devices require an affirmative action to be taken on the part of the patient. Yet, in some circumstances the patient is not aware or otherwise able to recognize that he or she needs assistance. Tenants may become unresponsive, ill, or injure themselves, without staff awareness that anything has happened.
Additionally, it is rarely noted when a patient begins slipping into dementia or senility, losing critical time for low cost intervention techniques. There are also privacy regulations that prevent staff from entering tenant rooms without being invited in, or receiving consent from the family, unless an emergency is suspected.